Ballston Spa's Mill: Cotton, Paper Bags, and Chocolate

The brick mill complex in Ballston Spa has housed three completely different industries across its life. It began around eighteen fifty as a cotton and wool mill powered by the Kayaderosseras Creek. In the years after the Civil War, an entrepreneur named George West turned to paper bags, and he made square-bottom paper bags by the millions.

His company grew into one of the largest bag manufacturers in the country. Then in nineteen eighteen, Frederick Bischoff bought the complex and turned it into a chocolate factory, running it until cocoa and sugar shortages during World War Two forced it to close. The buildings still stand on the creek, now used as shops, carrying three industries and more than a century of Saratoga County commerce in their walls.